| Author |
Topic |
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Trash80toG-4
NIGHT STALKER
USA
2899 Posts |
 Posted - 10 Jul 2002 : 09:55:33
new info just appeared on fritter to check out, does anybody have info to verify this observation or a comment to make about the possibilities?
quote:
quote:
on Today at 9:03am, performaman wrote:
I have just managed to boot my Performa 630 off of OS 7.5 that I loaded into RAM. I guess this means that the ram disk dosen't empty on shutdown. Thanks to everyone for their help.
that's interesting! no wonder the 630 chews thru a PRAM Battery in a hurry when it's on a switched PowerKeyPro socket or a power strip! i'll bet the circuits and logic necessary for doing the bootup routine from the remote control signal entails powering and refreshing the system's DRAM! if so, the 630 is the only REALLY RAM disk friendly architecture since the PB100 AFAIK!woohoo!!!!!! i gotta try this on my 6360! i used to keep the whole OS and FirstClass in a RAM disk on my 100 and it really zoomed compared to banging on the hard disk all the time!
thanks for the info!
jt
this would be so cool if it works out to be true!hey, markymark! would mpegdec run better on a 630 if it were to be loaded into a RAM Disk along with a stripped down system, optimized folder for it, that was designated as the boot volume? (the HDD Volume would be a standard alternate boot volume) jt  ™.
Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball
C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF |
cinemafia
Guerrilla Recon Leader
USA
2965 Posts |
Posted - 10 Jul 2002 : 10:46:58
Wow! Now that's cool...if only a newer PPC (like the 7500/9500) with 1-1.5GB of RAM could do that, boy would 8.6-9.x run like lightning!!!666th poster and 666th thread-creator
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thelip
Full Member
USA
729 Posts |
Posted - 10 Jul 2002 : 11:44:52
you can find great stripped down systems at gambas sitecheck out the superbooters, they rock. btw, wouldn't the system be retained in the ram disk during restarts? ...but not cold boots, correct? and that's what's you found out that works? i was a little confused. _______________________
Sgt. Thelip
Heavy Weapons Specialist
950 division
Liberated Macs: 12 |
Trash80toG-4
NIGHT STALKER
USA
2899 Posts |
Posted - 10 Jul 2002 : 12:44:32
quote:
you can find great stripped down systems at gambas sitecheck out the superbooters, they rock. btw, wouldn't the system be retained in the ram disk during restarts? ...but not cold boots, correct? and that's what's you found out that works? i was a little confused.
turns out it works the same way as the others and he lost his boot disk on a shutdown! crap!
quote:
dang! oh well, it woulda been really nice if they'd played around with that part of the architure while they were adding the new slots, the video goodies/remote control interface and the IDE controller! bleh! whatever, i think the shareware i used was called RAMDisk+, dunno. it writes the contents of the RAM disk to file on the HDD at shutdown and rewrites and reboots from it automatically on startup IIRC. this was a LONG time ago, so i'm not at all sure about the feature set. i DO remember that i thought it was an elegant approach to the problem at the time though.look for something with that feature set and let me know about it if you find one. i'm dying to see how well mpegdec will run if it's loaded into the RAMDisk along with an optimized minimal system install.  jt
i'm still curious about a performance boost for mpegdec, does anybody know of a RamDisk solution as described for systems 7.1-7.5.3/5 (anything higher would be OK too if necessary) on the Quadra 630 series?one for my 6360/G3 L2 and O.S. 9.0 would be fun to play with too!  ] jt ™.
Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball
C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF |
Flash
Full Member
Australia
637 Posts |
Posted - 14 Jul 2002 : 00:24:25
quote:
Wow! Now that's cool...if only a newer PPC (like the 7500/9500) with 1-1.5GB of RAM could do that, boy would 8.6-9.x run like lightning!!!
I have a 8600/G3 with 448MB of RAM, and I almost always have a 100MB RAM disk. Unless I am doing some serious photoshopping, I never use up all the RAM on my Mac. I usually boot up once a week (or should I say - crash once a week) and apart from that I hardly ever quit applications, so everything is always open. I sometimes use the RAM disk for my internet cache (but it's not that much faster than a HD) and just use it for dumping stuff that I download until I file it somewhere permanent. I also do a lot of generic system installs on it, then copy the completed system to other Macs or disks....that kind of thing. I've made myself a couple of boot floppies including the Memory Control Panel. This is really good for PowerBooks and stuff. I boot from the floppy, then create a RAM disk. Reboot, then copy the System onto the RAM disk. Booting up after that is soooo quick (coz you know how slow booting from a floppy is) It also frees up the floppy drive so that I can run utilities from the disk and that kinda stuff. I do the same when I'm doing repairs on my 8600, but other than that I don't boot from RAM. OS 9 doesn't like booting from the RAM disk too much - in fact OS9 doeesn't like my 8600 much anyway! 8.1 is fine with it though. cheers
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G4from128k
Full Member
USA
873 Posts |
Posted - 14 Jul 2002 : 05:53:43
quote:
i'm still curious about a performance boost for mpegdec, does anybody know of a RamDisk solution as described for systems 7.1-7.5.3/5 (anything higher would be OK too if necessary) on the Quadra 630 series?
You might get better mpegdec performance if you load the sound files on to a RAM disk, but I doubt that loading all the software and system onto a RAM disk will help. The key to deciding if a RAM disk will help is to listen for disk acesss activity with the application -- if the app accesses the disk, then RAM disk will help. I'd bet that once mpegdec gets going, the only disk access is to get more mpeg data so you only need to put the data file on the RAM disk. You might also improve mpegdec performance by killing any processes that constantly steal low levels of CPU time (like Appletalk, menubar clock, screen saver, etc.)BTW, like Flash described, loading a stripped system onto a RAM disk is very very useful if you have a old Mac with one HD and no available boot floppies/CD-ROM and want to run Disk First Aid. I did this with system 7.5.3 on my old PB 190CS so I could check/fix the HD. My own hand-stripped version of 7.5.3 takes up about 4 MB and runs nicely on a 5 MB RAM disk (leaving 11 MB of the 16 MB total RAM for machine memery). I leave the folder with the stripped OS on the main HD, boot from the main HD, create the RAM disk, copy the striped-OS folder from the HD to the RAM disk, change the "startup disk", and reboot (I even created my own read-me file with instructions so when I go to do this again in about a year, I won't have to rely on my addled brain to remeber the steps). G4From128k by Day: Mild-Mannered Engineer and Trapeze(tm) Artist
by Night: Colonel of Truth, Justice, and the Macintosh Way
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markymark
Junior Member
223 Posts |
Posted - 24 Aug 2002 : 07:04:32
G4From128k is spot on about MpegDec. It reads the mp3 file in 32kb chunks and doesn't affect the speed of the decoding much. I've got MpegDec to run in async mode so while it's decoding you can use another app in the foreground. Usually you do this sort of thing with threads (MacOSX Linux Windoze 95 etc) but the pre MacOSX has no threads except for that addon thing that I don't want to use so I've been able to do it just with callbacks which is interesting. Callbacks are are a sort of interrupt thing that can work in the background.
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Trash80toG-4
NIGHT STALKER
USA
2899 Posts |
Posted - 24 Aug 2002 : 12:46:18
quote:
G4From128k is spot on about MpegDec.I don't want to use so I've been able to do it just with callbacks which is interesting. Callbacks are are a sort of interrupt thing that can work in the background.
cool thanks guys! i just love learning about crap i'll never use in a million years!  sounds to me like you're trying to structure the way you're handling the process as closely to being like protected memory as you can with some interesting cheats? if so, iLike! i nabbed a generic DSP card that you might find interesting: i think it's a SuperMac ThunderStorm Card here's the info in the description of the Apple Media Authoring Solution.
quote:
Features
SuperMac DigitalFilm
¥ NuBus video card for full-motion, full-screen video and audio capture and editing
¥ Hardware-accelerated Apple Photo JPEG compatible image compression and decompression
¥ 24-bit accelerated graphics on up to
17-inch displays at 832 by 624 resolutionSuperMac ThunderStorm
¥ NuBus card accelerates multimedia filters for Adobe Premiere and Photoshop and CoSA After Effects
¥ Ideal for CD-ROM Cinepak video production Apple Media Tool
¥ Multimedia production software Adobe Premiere Deluxe CD-ROM Edition
¥ Digital video production and editing software Adobe Photoshop Deluxe CD-ROM Edition
¥ Photo manipulation, image editing, and production software CoSA After Effects
¥ Video special-effects software Macromedia Director
¥ Authoring software for multimedia production Macromedia MacroModel
¥ 3-D, spline-based modeling software allows fast creation of 3-D objects from 2-D reference objects Macromedia Action!
¥ Multimedia presentation software Macromedia Sound Edit Pro
¥ Software for digitizing and editing sound Macromedia ClipMedia
¥ Provides video, animation, music, and sound clips for your multimedia presentations Kodak Shoebox
¥ Image database package for Kodak PhotoCD users supports an index of
multiple PhotoCD discs AppleDesign Powered Speakers
¥ High-quality stereo separation and | sound
¥ Excellent frequency response
¥ Built-in noise-reduction circuitry Technical Specifications SuperMac DigitalFilm Card
¥ Video capture:
Variable up to 640H
Variable up to 480V
¥ Print to tape and display:
NTSCÑ60 fields per second at 640 by 480 pixels
PALÑ50 fields per second at 786 by 576 pixels
¥ 24-bit graphics with Thunder QuickDraw acceleration on up to 832 by 624 pixel displays
¥ Audio capture: Stereo input and output at 8-bit resolution with audio sample up to 44.1 kHz SuperMac ThunderStorm Card
¥ Dual programmable DSPs optimized for image- processing acceleration
¥ 60 MIPS performance
looks to me like they just might have been using it for a sound co-pro as well as graphics, i think i found a couple references to it being used by another sound application, dunno, it's a little hazy and i misplaced the links. the plug ins and filters from that setup might be an interesting thing to get ahold of! i also found some multimedia and sound tools on a bunch of old ADC CD's that showed up on my doorstep, if you haven't already gotten ahold of all of the apple tools online, lemme know and i'll try to document what i've got available for you.
jt ™.
Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball
C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF
Edited by - Trash80toG-4 on 24 Aug 2002 12:49:34 |
Trash80toG-4
NIGHT STALKER
USA
2899 Posts |
Posted - 04 Oct 2002 : 18:51:17
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The bundle of NuBus goodness is on its way and thanks to a little googling for info on cinemo's ebay NuBus optical fibre card find, I've got some confirmation that mine is indeed the ThunderStorm accelerator for Adobe Premiere (and PhotoShop, but I hate playing with pixels!) and should make a nice addition to my VideoVision workstation which is bundled with Premiere! Now we'll try to find out if they used it for any sound acceleration duty as part of the Apple Media Authoring Solution.  jt ™.
Trash Hauler: call sign: eight-ball
C.O. AC-130H SpecOps 68kMLAAF |
macaka
New Member
France
88 Posts |
Posted - 21 Oct 2002 : 17:04:12
On a 68k, convert yours files in QT format with sparkle 245.It's the best solution.AHAHAHAH !!!!!!It's the war.... |
630/RAMDisk/system/mpegdec=Acceleration?
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